Born on 3 April 1924 in Omaha (Nebraska), Marlon Brando was one of the greatest American actors of the 20th century. He made his big-screen debut in the 1950 film The Men. The following year, he starred in the film adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire, instantly becoming a Hollywood idol. He was one of the first to adopt method acting, a technique in which the actor seeks to truly inhabit the character they are portraying, often departing from the script and improvising. He was named Best Actor at the 1955 Oscars for his performance in On the Waterfront. After a lost decade in the 1960s, Brando found new success with his role as Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 classic The Godfather, for which he earned a second Academy Award. He turned down the Oscar in protest against his country’s treatment of Native Americans. He made his final cinema appearance in The Score in 2001, alongside Robert De Niro and Edward Norton. He died of heart failure on 1 July 2004. The stamp shows the actor alongside Grace Kelly at the 1955 Oscars ceremony.
